Vance defends 'cat lady' comments, suggests Trump won't ban abortion pill in morning show appearances

JD Vance, former President Donald Trump’s running mate in the 2024 election, made the rounds on several morning news shows on Sunday.

In a series of interviews, the Republican senator from Ohio addressed Trump's recent comments about possibly restricting access to mifepristone, the so-called abortion pill, as well as his controversial statements about “childless cat ladies,” and questions he's raised about the military service of Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Here are some of the key takeaways from Vance’s Sunday morning media blitz.

On blocking medication abortion nationwide

In an interview with Margaret Brennan on CBS News’ Face the Nation, Vance sought to downplay comments made by Trump last week, suggesting that, if returned to the White House, he could be open to imposing a nationwide ban on mifepristone.

Vance, however, indicated that a Trump-Vance administration would not seek to revoke access to the medication that, according to the Associated Press, was used in two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. last year, insisting that he and the former president intend to defer to the states on abortion.

“What the president has said very clearly is that abortion policy should be made by the states,” Vance said.

Asked whether a second Trump administration would reverse the Food and Drug Administration’s 2000 approval of mifepristone, Vance said, “You, of course, want to make sure that any medicine is safe, that it's prescribed in the right way, and so forth, but the president wants individual states to make these decisions.”

Vance was also questioned about Trump’s intentions with mifepristone by CNN’s Dana Bash during a separate interview on State of the Union. Bash noted that Project 2025, a conservative policy proposal often associated with Trump and Vance, includes a plan to restrict access to the abortion medication nationwide.

Vance claimed that Project 2025 is “not affiliated” with the Trump-Vance campaign, telling Bash that Trump “is not trying to prevent women who have nonviable pregnancies from getting access to the medicare medical health care they need. We are going to let voters make these decisions.”

In a video message posted on the Democrats' official YouTube channel on Sunday, Walz appeared to respond to Vance's comments, saying that Vance and Trump are "going to ban medication abortion."

"We have a rule," Walz said of himself and Harris. "Whether you would make the same decision as someone else, just mind your own damn business."

Cat lady comments

Bash asked Vance to address the recent backlash over previous comments he’s made about childless Americans, including during a July 2021 interview with then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson in which he described Democratic leaders, including Harris, as “childless cat ladies.”

Vance insisted that he wasn’t criticizing people for not having kids, but rather criticizing Harris in particular for being “anti-child,” saying that she has said it is reasonable for people not to have children because of climate change.

According to Factcheck.org, this explanation seems to be based on a misinterpretation of comments made by Harris during a college tour last year, during which she said young climate activists expressed their anxieties about climate change, including with regard to having children, but she did not endorse the idea of not having kids due to environmental concerns.

Discrediting Walz’s military service

On CNN, Vance was pressed about past comments he made about Walz’s military service — including at a press conference last week in Michigan, where he claimed that Walz “dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go [to Iraq] without him.” Walz, who spent 24 years in the Nebraska and Minnesota Army National Guards, has stated that he chose to retire from the National Guard in 2005 because he was making a bid for Congress at the time.

Vance told Bash that he “never criticized what Walz did when he was in the military,” but rather, “I’m criticizing the fact that he lied about his service for political gain.”

Vance had accused Walz of lying about serving in Iraq when Walz told a crowd in 2018 that private citizens shouldn’t have access to weapons that “I carried in war.” The Harris-Walz campaign later stated that Walz, who was never deployed to a combat zone during his years of service, “misspoke.”

Vance served in the Marines from 2003 to 2007 and was deployed to Iraq.

Pro-family values

When pressed on questionable comments he’s made about families — including in a 2021 speech before the conservative group, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, where he suggested that those with children should have extra votes — Vance accused the Harris campaign of misconstruing his words.

“Do I regret saying it? I regret that the media and the Kamala Harris campaign has, frankly, distorted what I said," he told This Week’s Jonathan Karl about the comments. “They turn this into a policy proposal that I never made. I said, 'I want us to be more pro-family, and I do want us to be more pro-family.'”

Vance said he hopes to do this by expanding the child tax credit and by making housing more affordable so young families can afford to buy a home.

Meanwhile, earlier this month, Senate Republicans blocked a bipartisan bill that would have expanded the child tax credit — Vance wasn’t present for the vote due to a scheduled visit at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Speaking to Face the Nation, Vance characterized that vote as a “show vote,” adding, “If I had been there, it would have failed.”